From Library Journal
New York Observer theater critic Heilpern has pulled together 70 of his essaysAwhat he considers his best, most important writings. Although he doesn't directly answer the question posed in the book's title, he shows us the joy, anger, anxiety, and other responses he's had to the plays that he has puzzled over during the course of his career. His comments are perceptive, enjoyable, and always livelyAwhether one agrees with them or not. One provocative essay, for example, which deals with the differences between British and American theater, is sure to cause a stir among theater folks. One quibble is that the pieces are not dated, so, although Heilpern writes about some people more than once (Arthur Miller and David Mamet, for example), it is hard to track how his ideas and opinions about them have changed over the years. Recommended for academic libraries or major subject collections.ASusan L. Peters, Emory Univ. Lib., Atlanta Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Most theater reviews have a very short shelf life, for rare are the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Robert Brustein, whose notices remain news years after their subjects have closed. Heilpern clearly aspires to those likes but often falls short. Too many of these 70 or so pieces culled from the New York Observer fail to rise above the "thumbs up, thumbs down" world of daily deadline journalism. Yet there are some gems. Every once in a while, especially in the most recent entries, Heilpern is touched by a muse of fire. Reviews of David Mamet's Cryptogram and The Old Neighborhood become devastating critiques of Mamet's writing style and his place in American theater. Articles on the Tony Awards and the closing of Carousel spark thoughtful, passionate meditations on the state of theater in the '90s. Of the several news features, some are pure puffery, amusing but not very nutritious, whereas a few are well-researched, intelligently written profiles, most notably those of Arthur Miller and the English music hall performer Max Wall. Jack Helbig


From Kirkus Reviews
A collection of reviews, interviews, and some other (mostly) theater-related writing by the drama critic for the New York Observer. One of the reasons to go to live theater (as opposed to, say, staying at home and renting a movie) is that the experience is unique. No individual performance will be repeated in exactly the same way, even if the show has been running for years. An additional frisson to being an audience member is the promise of having an effect on the performance, since the chemistry between the performers and the audience, however ephemeral and undefinable, is essential to a plays effect. It is this very singularity about theater-going that gives reading reviews of plays that have long since closed something of an antiquarian air. Unless one is a theater professional, studying former productions of a particular play or researching an actor's career, a collection of such reviews is likely to date poorly. We learn more about Heilpern and his opinions (e.g., he is down on Anglophilia, though given the past few Broadway seasons, reviewsboth good and badof English productions predominate) than we do about theater as an art form. His criticism, which is well thought out if somewhat dully written, eventually raises the question ``Who cares?'' Considering that the subtitle promises to reveal why theater matters, it's disappointing to find that the book itself is a bit of a yawn. But there are some enjoyable pieces, like the profiles of Nol Coward and Alec Guinness, and a report on the world of British theater. And the reminiscence of ``Lunch with Gielgud and Richardson, with its demand that the waiter ``bear the offending liver away,'' is highly entertaining. Fans of Heilpern, or students of theater criticism, may want to pick this up; anyone else should just get out there and see a play. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Salon
[Heilpern's]clear thinking, deceptively breezy prose and infectious, generous wit are consistently delightful...Heilpern's best writing offers many of the strange, almost religious delights of an evening at the theater...American playwrights and audiences owe Heilpern a great debt.


Playbill
A Man For All Theatre. The New York Observer's elitist, and often quite marvelous theatre critic John Heilpern has had a number of his pungent essays on the theatre gathered up and published... [The book is] called HOW GOOD IS DAVID MAMET , ANYWAY?--which should sit well with the Atlantic Theater Company as it prepares to launch into a whole season of plays by its esteemed founder, the aforementioned Mr.M.


Natasha Richardson
Brilliantly witty and provocative, John Heilpern's writing is based on a passionate and profound appreciation of vibrant, living theater.


George C. Wolfe
John Heilpern is truly rare. His reviews are generous, openhearted and smart, without being effusive--tough and incisive without being mean. And ever present is his love for the theater and respect for the people who make it.


Peter Brook
To describe a play he likes, John Heilpern says it was "mindbogglingly entertaining." He could be referring to his own joyful book. In the great tradition of English theatre criticism, his writing hides its deep seriousness behind a glitter of fun.


Salon.com, December 3, 1999
Heilpern's greatest merit as a critic may be his refusal to let intelligence get in the way of enthusiasm...his clear thinking, deceptively breezy prose and infectious, generous wit are consistently delightful...Heilpern's best writing offers many of the strange, almost religious delights of an evening at the theater.


Time Out New York, December 2, 1999
An absolutely marvelous, seriously hilarious compilation of his old reviews, along with his essays on the theater and why it matters.


Chicago Sun-Times, December 5, 1999
"How Good is David Mamet, Anyway?" is marked by a seemingly effortless, unpretentious and entertaining style that is full of passion, wit, and erudition.


Book Description
What makes an actor great? Why is English theater better than American-or is it? How good is David Mamet, anyway?
John Heilpern, theater critic for The New York Observer, has spent a career watching the plays and the players, the geniuses and the also-rans, the great and the not so great on both sides of the Atlantic, and writes about them with lightness and passion.
How Good is David Mamet, Anyway? is the best of John Heilpern's theater writings. The players are many: Vanessa Redgrave and Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren and George C. Wolfe, Fiona Shaw and Savion Glover, Karen Finley and David Mamet, and dozens of others. There's also an important essay on the differences between the British and American theater scenes, profiles of such legends as Noel Coward, Alec Guinness, and Michael Bennett, engaging pieces on such figures as Peter Brook and Robert Brustein, review-essays on dozens of great, good, and awful plays, as well as contrary opinions on some of our most widely admired playwrights. There are comic turns, too: "The Year of the Penis" and "The Art of Falling Asleep at the Theatre." Serious or witty, John Heilpern's criticism persuades us that theater matters, after all.
For anyone who loves the stage and its timeless mystery and fun, How Good is David Mamet, Anyway? is a chocolate box of a book.


From the Publisher
Tony Kushner: "John Heilpern is one of the smartest, most literate, most decent critics this country's theater has had. He writes beautifully, he's wonderfully funny, he's incisive and insightful. Even when one disagrees with him (I would, for instance, answer that I think David Mamet is very, very good, great even), one finds in the disagreement the pleasure to be had from intelligent argument about art. Most importantly, Heilpern cheers for the difficult and daring in theater. As much as he shows himself here to be a great chronicler of our theater's past, John Heilpern is one of our most important and articulate champions of its future." George C. Wolfe: "John Heilpern is truly rare. His reviews are generous, openhearted and smart, without being effusive--tough and incisive without being mean. And ever present is his love for the theater and respect for the people who make it." Peter Brook: "To describe a play he liked, John Heilpern says it was 'mindbogglingly entertaining.' He could be referring to his own joyful book. In the great tradition of English theater criticism, his writing hides its deep seriousness behind a glitter of fun."


From the Inside Flap
What makes an actor great? Why is English theater better than American--or is it? How good is David Mamet, anyway? "How Good is David Mamet, Anyway?" is the best of John Heilpern's theater writings. There's a glittering cast list: Vanessa Redgrave and Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren and Savion Glover, Karen Finley and David Mamet, and dozens of others. There's also a major piece on the vital differences between the British and American theater scenes, profiles of such legends as Noel Coward, Gielgud and Richardson, and Alec Guinness, review-essays on the great, good, and awful plays of our time, as well as irreverent views of some of our most widely admired theater icons.


About the Author
John Heilpern is Chief Drama Critic for The New York Observer and contributing editor to Vogue. Unique among drama critics, he has worked as Peter Hall's assistant director at Britain's National Theatre, and with Michael Bennett on Broadway. He has also been U. S. correspondent for the London Times and The Observer. His drama criticism has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times: in 1994, 1995, and 1997. He is currently writing the official biography of John Osborne, to be published by Knopf. He is the author of a classic book about theatre, Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa, being reissued this season by Routledge.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

What makes an actor great? Why is English theater better than American-or is it? How good is David Mamet, anyway?

John Heilpern, theater critic for The New York Observer, has spent a career watching the plays and the players, the geniuses and the also-rans, the great and the not so great on both sides of the Atlantic, and writes about them with lightness and passion.

How Good is David Mamet, Anyway? is the best of John Heilpern's theater writings. The players are many: Vanessa Redgrave and Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren and George C. Wolfe, Fiona Shaw and Savion Glover, Karen Finley and David Mamet, and dozens of others. There's also an important essay on the differences between the British and American theater scenes, profiles of such legends as Noel Coward, Alec Guinness, and Michael Bennett, engaging pieces on such figures as Peter Brook and Robert Brustein, review-essays on dozens of great, good, and awful plays, as well as contrary opinions on some of our most widely admired playwrights. There are comic turns, too: "The Year of the Penis" and "The Art of Falling Asleep at the Theatre." Serious or witty, John Heilpern's criticism persuades us that theater matters, after all.

For anyone who loves the stage and its timeless mystery and fun, How Good is David Mamet, Anyway? is a chocolate box of a book.

SYNOPSIS

Despite its title, this book is a collection of many, short, fun-to- read writings on British and American theater, highlighting a variety of stars such as Ralph Fiennes, Helen Mirren, Fiona Shaw, Savion Glover, Karen Finley, and, of course, David Mamet. Also included is a piece on the differences between British and American theater scenes; profiles of classic British actors Coward, Gielgud, Guiness, and Richardson; and review-essays of individual plays. Heilpern is the witty Oxford-educated drama critic for the . No subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Charles Marowitz - American Book Review

How Good is David Mamet, Anyway? begs the questions: How Good is John Heilpern? We'll, he is really quite good. He dispenses an easy, readable, lighthearted prose that reveals a congenital love for the art-form and a tendency to shrug, sneer, and occasionally fulminate without becoming vulgar or bitchy or losing his verbal elegance. Heilpern belongs squarely in the first category where he is in the illustrious company of writers such as Frank Rich, Clive Barnes, and John Simon. He doesn't have the muscularity of a Robert Brustein or the intellectual breadth of an Eric Bentley, but then he is far more entertaining than either. What he does have, which is quite unique to himself, is a certain irrespressible levity that makes him agreeable and accessible to an ever-increasing yuppie population composed of both high-brows and middle-brows with high-brow aspirations.

Andrew O'Hehir - Salon

I'm not sure John Heilpern can convince the world that theater matters; that task may be beyond even his abilities. But How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway? -- a new collection of reviews and essays drawn from Heilpern's estimable career as a theater critic on both sides of the Atlantic -- will certainly convince you that theater matters to him.

Heilpern is as erudite and sophisticated as you'd expect an Oxford man who worked under Peter Hall at the Royal National Theatre to be, but his greatest merit as a critic may be his refusal to let intelligence get in the way of enthusiasm. When he loves a show, he simply loves it, losing all fear of being thought unsubtle or indiscriminating. "And what a treat it was!" he exclaims in his eulogy for the Lincoln Center production of Carousel. Of Yasmina Reza's Broadway hit Art, he writes, "We can't be friends anymore if you don't enjoy Art."

A handful of the pieces in How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway? -- including a hilarious transcript of a lunch date with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson -- go back to the 1970s, when Heilpern was a feature writer for the Observer in London. Most, however, come from his current gig as drama critic for the New York Observer, where he has worked since 1992. Virtually every major New York play of the '90s is covered herein, from Angels in America, Ragtime, Arcadia and The Lion King right up to [1999]'s revivals of Death of a Salesman and The Iceman Cometh. Even when I find myself disagreeing with Heilpern's judgment (on Mamet's The Cryptogram, for instance, or on Janet McTeer's Nora in A Doll's House, both of which he dislikes), his clear thinking, deceptively breezy prose and infectious, generous wit are consistently delightful.

Moreover, Heilpern has his priorities straight whether you agree with his verdicts or not. He wants pleasure, yes; he makes it clear that he sees theater as a symbolic arena, not a force for ending war or poverty. But he values bravery, ambition and seriousness of purpose over spectacle and attitude. It's easy enough to opine that Tony Kushner's Angels in America and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia were [the 1990]'s greatest plays, but Heilpern is not afraid of chancier choices. I'm not sure he's right that Suzan-Lori Parks' The America Play is great theater, but I've had to reconsider my reaction in the light of the extraordinary prose poem the play calls forth from him: "Search for the true. Dig, weep, dig, weep, fake, dig. Spade, paw, pah, haw! haw! haw! Look on the bright side! Shoot, black hole, hole in the head. So much to live for! In this sweet land of liberty."

As in that example, Heilpern's best writing offers many of the strange, almost religious delights of an evening at the theater. He is not mean very often, and when he is he can be self-mocking -- "What else can I complain about?" he asks when he has finished savaging the Diana Rigg Medea. Mamet's most ardent defenders will find Heilpern's parody both telling and irresistible: "Well, hell, look at it: um um, Mametspeak, I mean, it's, it's...there to, to -- what's the word? To reveal...conceal the...um... What?...meaning." I found his bemused tolerance of Karen Finley's The American Chestnut even funnier. Finley, he reports, "has also been known to shove yams up her ass. I don't know how I feel about that." Later in the same review, annoyed by Finley's lack of anything approaching theatrical professionalism, he suggests that "it's understandable to think: 'Speak up, dear! Project!' In such irritating ways, Ms. Finley can turn a libertarian into a disapproving, half-deaf old fusspot."

Finally, American playwrights and audiences owe Heilpern a great debt, whether they know it or not, for being the only New York critic of stature to resist the recent tide of unthinking Anglophilia. It helps, of course, that Heilpern is an Englishman who passionately loves the great tradition of British theater -- which means he can tell when the Brits are trying to dump a load of rubbish on the stupid colonials. His attacks on the Rigg Medea and Ian McKellen's bewildering Richard III are bracing examples of his skepticism. But as Heilpern says in an angry essay near the end of the book, the real problem is not British theater, much of which remains terrific, but that the British conquest of the Manhattan stage could not have happened without a "shocking display of Anglophilia" from the New York Times and Broadway's leading producers, who "buy anything stamped with the English Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval."

I shouldn't spoil the pleasures of reading How Good Is David Mamet, Anyway? any further. It's more than a collection of witty essays or a defense of a seemingly archaic art form. It's a testament that, as Heilpern writes of a performance by Judi Dench, "speaks to us of such a profound belief in theater that it amounts to a religion, a mysterious renewal, a way of life."

Library Journal

New York Observer theater critic Heilpern has pulled together 70 of his essays--what he considers his best, most important writings. Although he doesn't directly answer the question posed in the book's title, he shows us the joy, anger, anxiety, and other responses he's had to the plays that he has puzzled over during the course of his career. His comments are perceptive, enjoyable, and always lively--whether one agrees with them or not. One provocative essay, for example, which deals with the differences between British and American theater, is sure to cause a stir among theater folks. One quibble is that the pieces are not dated, so, although Heilpern writes about some people more than once (Arthur Miller and David Mamet, for example), it is hard to track how his ideas and opinions about them have changed over the years. Recommended for academic libraries or major subject collections.--Susan L. Peters, Emory Univ. Lib., Atlanta Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Time Out New York

An absolutely marvelous, seriously hilarious compilation.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Mindbogglingly entertaining and a joyful book. — Brook

John Heilpern is one of the smartenst, most literate, most decent critics this country's theater has had. He writes beautifully, he's wonderfully funny, he's incisive and insightful. — Tony Kushner